Mr. Melancholy Wants to Live a Peaceful Life - Chap 1
At 5:59 AM, Yu Hua woke up exactly one minute before his alarm rang. He turned off the alarm and quietly got out of bed. You Zhengping, sleeping soundly lying beside him, was entirely unaffected.
Yu Hua was twenty-seven years old. He was You Zhengping’s partner, a graduate of one of the country’s top three institutes of higher learning, and the former human resources manager of a famous banking institution, with an annual salary ranging from the hundreds to millions. Apart from necessary social engagements, company cocktail parties, and other such events, he always came home punctually at six in the evening, went to sleep before 11 PM, woke up a minute or two before 6 AM, and took a half an hour to an hour break at midday, depending on the state of work.
He had a calm and steadiness that far surpassed his actual age; there seemed to be many stories hidden in his deep eyes. Consistent good exercise habits had given him an excellent figure. His trim suits hid his muscles, giving a restrained air to the whiff of hormones.
Yu Hua’s cooking was very good. He liked to get up a little early and prepare a sumptuous breakfast for his partner You Zhengping. Every time he saw You Zhengping’s satisfaction eating the breakfast he had made, the happiness of being alive would rise in Yu Hua’s heart.
At seven-thirty in the morning, You Zhengping was roused by the aroma of breakfast. He gave an exaggerated stretch, yawned enormously, and flopped in bed hugging his quilt with his hair a mess, mumbling, “What tasty things did you make today?”
Yu Hua laid breakfast out on the dining table and said to You Zhengping, lazing in the bedroom, “You said yesterday you wanted to eat a Guangdong style breakfast. I made shrimp dumplings, shumai, custard buns, congee with slices of fish, fried wontons, and a custard tart. There’s also grilled sausages and steamed milk pudding with red beans. I didn’t prepare much last night, and time in the morning is limited, so I only made a bit.”
“You call that a bit?” You Zhengping vaulted out of bed, rushed into the bathroom, and quickly washed up.
He had married Yu Hua three years ago. After many years of living together, You Zhengping had developed a habit of eating breakfast, and his biological clock had also gradually become regular.
Before meeting Yu Hua, You Zhengping’s living habits had been a total mess.
He’d played on his phone until three in the morning every day. Work started at 9 AM; he would be woken by his first alarm at 8:30. After turning off the alarm, he’d roll over to sleep some more. At 8:40, the second alarm would ring. Only at 8:50, when the third alarm, which was set to make the shrill sound of a police siren, went off, would You Zhengping jump out of bed, take three minutes to carelessly wash up and dress, then run madly to his place of work, which wasn’t far from his dormitory, and clock in precisely at nine.
He’d never eaten breakfast. Lunch had always been a high-calorie, heavily-flavored food like malatang or hotpot. In the evening he would snack constantly, and at eleven at night he would order barbecue and beer and eat until he was full to bursting.
The young You Zhengping had liked to go all out on eating and playing; food had to be eaten in big mouthfuls, alcohol drunk in big gulps, games played the whole night through. Night was party time for a young man. “Why sleep when you’re alive when you can sleep forever after you die?” were the words he had used to fob off his elders. Living recklessly and triumphantly was the life You Zhengping had looked forward to.
Only when he and Yu Hua had met and fallen in love had You Zhengping slowly learned to go to bed early and get up early. He had also given up late night snacks.
After taking a shower and blowdrying his hair, he pushed back his thick hair. Thinking of his layabout friends, who still stayed up all night and were losing their hair by the day, You Zhengping laughed smugly and picked up a comb, preparing to comb his hair into a youthful and elegant hairstyle.
Facing the mirror, he brushed to the left and brushed to the right. There was always a stubborn lock of hair in the center that kept sticking up, like an unrestrained ahoge1 pointing up to the sky.
Carrying the comb, You Zhengping went over beside Yu Hua, who had laid out breakfast. “There’s a bit of hair sticking up. Comb it for me.”
Yu Hua was not only good at cooking, he had magic hands like a salon’s best hairdresser. With only a little arranging from him, You Zhengping’s hairstyle would become elegant and individual. The disobedient ahoge would immediately become soft and smooth under Yu Hua’s hands.
Yu Hua looked at You Zhengping’s hair, got out a paper towel to wipe his hands, and calmly said, “I can’t, there’s oil on my hands. Why don’t you use hair gel on it?”
“All right.” The expectant look in You Zhengping’s eyes dimmed at once. He looked at the expressionless Yu Hua and didn’t deal with the hair that was sticking up. He carelessly dropped the wooden comb in the bathroom and sat down unhappily at the dining table.
Breakfast was tasty. You Zhengping had just eaten a shrimp dumpling when he saw Yu Hua putting away the kitchen implements and asked involuntarily, “Aren’t you going to eat with me?”
“I already ate while you were showering,” Yu Hua said with his back towards You Zhengping.
The delicious breakfast instantly became tasteless. With difficulty, You Zhengping swallowed the food a mouthful at a time. He decided he wouldn’t speak to Yu Hua all day today!
After he had dully eaten breakfast, You Zhengping put on the clothes Yu Hua had prepared for him last night and couldn’t resist going over to the kitchen.
Yu Hua was washing the dishes. There was only the rush of water in the kitchen.
“Well…” You Zhengping circled fretfully beside Yu Hua. “What are you doing today?”
The sound of the water stopped. Yu Hua, head lowered, stared at the dishes. There was no emotion in his voice. “Do housework, then go job hunting.”
“Oh…” You Zhengping brought his face up in front of Yu Hua and pointed to his own cheek. “I’m going to work. Good luck job hunting!”
Yu Hua tilted his head, ignored You Zhengping’s hint, and calmly said, “Be safe.”
The subtext was, “You can go, don’t get in the way of the housework.”
You Zhengping stared fixedly at Yu Hua, sucked in a breath through his nose, then turned and left. He rushed to the garage, shut himself up in the car, got out his phone, and called his underling Cen Xiao. “Yu Hua is ignoring me. He didn’t comb my hair for me, didn’t eat breakfast with me, didn’t even give me a good morning kiss before I went out. Does he want to get a divorce? No way, I managed to find someone so suitable, I’m definitely not getting divorced!”
Cen Xiao’s murky voice came over the phone: “Listen, do you know what time it is?”
“8:20, forty minutes before work starts. What’s the problem?” You Zhengping said confidently.
“So you know it’s 8:20 and not 8:50!” Cen Xiao howled over the phone. “My first alarm only rings at 8:40. Do you know how precious every minute of sleep is for me at this time? I’m going back to sleep now. No matter how important your problem is, please wait until we start work at nine to talk about it.”
Then he hung up the phone, and when You Zhengping called again, the phone had been turned off.
He hit the steering wheel in anger and snarled at the phone, “Was I wrong to call at 8:20? You crowd of night owls, not sleeping at night, not getting up in the morning—sooner or later you’ll go bald from all that staying up late!”
After venting his anger at the phone, You Zhengping at last lay feebly on the steering wheel, thinking about his and Yu Hua’s relations the last few days.
A week ago, when he’d gotten off work and come home, he’d seen that Yu Hua had come home very early and made dinner. He’d told him lifelessly, “I’ve been fired.”
It seemed that Yu Hua had offended his company’s management and had been fired at once. The company had given him a severance, but Yu Hua said it had all gone to cover a company executive’s medical expenses, and he had also put in some money. You Zhengping thought this was the company maliciously taking his money; why should Yu Hua’s salary go to an executive for medical expenses? He’d been angry enough to want to take his friends and go make a fuss in front of Yu Hua’s company’s doors; Yu Hua had held him back.
Yu Hua had taken out a loan to buy the apartment the two of them lived in. Each month’s mortgage payment was over 8000. Their savings had gone to buy You Zhengping a car just a month earlier. The remaining money was only enough for two or three months of mortgage payments.
You Zhengping was a casual worker at the subdistrict office, with a monthly salary of 2500. Added up over a year, it was just enough for him to pay for the expenses of a gas-guzzling off-road car; he couldn’t help at all with living expenses and rent.
Yu Hua had promised then that he would find work soon; he wouldn’t let You Zhengping worry.
But a week had passed. Yu Hua had hit a wall a few times, becoming increasingly cold and silent. For a whole week, they hadn’t hugged, kissed, or anything. Today was really over the line, not even a bit of physical contact; if he asked, Yu Hua wasn’t in the mood.
You Zhengping was about to go out of his mind with fretting. This couldn’t go on. He had to think of something!
After spending five minutes being depressed in the car, at 8:30, You Zhengping floored the gas pedal and drove the car out of the garage. He was going to go to work and find his crowd of underlings to discuss what he should do to improve Yu Hua’s mood!
When You Zhengping’s car drove out, Yu Hua was standing at the window upstairs, quietly watching him drive away.
Only when he couldn’t see the car anymore did Yu Hua move his gaze to the kitchen sink. The dishes in the sink were all broken.
Yu Hua reached out, picked up the shards, and dropped them in the trash can. He had dropped them casually; the trash can split open.
Seeing this, Yu Hua sat weakly at the dining table, arms leaning on the tabletop. There was a crack. The dining table and the chair he was sitting on broke into pieces, the first-rate cedar wood furniture turning into a heap of broken wood.
Yu Hua stood and wrung his hands. He took a deep breath, and another deep breath, and at last got his strength under control. He didn’t stamp the tile under his feet into fragments.
Yu Hua put a hand to his forehead in exasperation. The last few days, while You Zhengping hadn’t been home, he had changed the furniture, tableware, and cooking implements three times, and had urgently found people to repair the floor tiles.
There was something he had always concealed from You Zhengping. He had once been a transmigrator who had travelled through countless worlds, carrying out all kinds of life-and-death games. He had brushed shoulders countless times with the god of death, at last obtaining the strongest power, becoming the final clearer.
A clearer was permitted one wish; no matter how difficult the wish was, it could be realized. He could even become the overlord of the universe.
But Yu Hua’s wish had been: “I want to become an ordinary person, work an ordinary job in an ordinary world, meet an ordinary and lovable partner, get to know him and fall in love with him, and spend a peaceful life together.”
So he had sealed all of his power, come to this world, and become an ordinary student. Relying on his own efforts, Yu Hua had tested into a good university, found a good job, then met You Zhengping and lived the peaceful life he had longed for.
Yu Hua had thought that life with You Zhengping was the happiness he had desired, but a week earlier, his happiness had been shattered.
When the executive at his company had fallen, Yu Hua had gone to help him up, but because his strength had been too fierce, he had bashed the executive’s head against the wall.
The executive had been seriously injured and gone to the hospital. It had already been extremely benevolent of the company not to pursue criminal charges against Yu Hua. They had fired Yu Hua, and Yu Hua had used a portion of his savings along with the severance to pay for the executive’s medical expenses.
The executive who’d gotten a concussion from having his head bashed had been quite friendly. He had advised Yu Hua to look into psychiatric help. Maybe being under too much stress had caused him to develop violent tendencies. He needed treatment as soon as possible.
But Yu Hua knew that this wasn’t violent tendencies; it was his sealed power awakening.
That power was very unstable, now strong and now weak. Each time Yu Hua thought he could control it, the power would suddenly increase, making him constantly break the things around him.
Because of this, Yu Hua hadn’t dared to touch You Zhengping these last few days, terrified that, like the company executive, he would smash his husband against the wall.
It was all right if he broke the material goods around him. He could just spend money and buy new ones. But You Zhengping absolutely couldn’t be hurt.
Of course Yu Hua had noticed You Zhengping constantly looking for opportunities to get close to him this morning, but he didn’t dare. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to control his strength, and You Zhengping would end up in the hospital.
The mess at home still needed to be cleaned up. Yu Hua took a deep breath, clasped his hands together several times, determined that this time he could control the degree of his strength, then carefully picked up his cell phone and bought a similar table and tableware online. He also told the merchant that they had to be delivered before three in the afternoon.
After putting in the order, Yu Hua relaxed slightly. He lost control of the strength of his hand. There was a crack; he had squeezed the phone and broken it.
Yu Hua: “…”
Staring at the remains of the phone, Yu Hua felt dismal. Could his peaceful life continue?
Translator’s Note
1Common anime visual cue of one lock of hair sticking up, often used to indicate silly characters.
